But here’s a new one:Picking your fave new book by just reading the first few lines.

Alright, not all that crazy, but let them explain:

The first few lines are the fastest—most fun—way to pick a book. Think of it like this: If the author has got you on page one, just imagine what she can do by page 300.

Now that’s a pretty good argument, right?

Try this one on for size:

Everyone needs a hero. In the worst of times there is someone, in the past or the present, in the same household or a thousand miles away, who can teach you what you need to know, a guide through the darkness.
— Alice Hoffman, Survival Lessons

Or this one:

The first thing that went wrong was the emergency landing. My husband and I were both reading In Flight Magazine and enjoying the complimentary wine in first class—I’d never flown first class before, but it was our honeymoon and we thought that was what we were supposed to do; drink in the daytime, luxuriate in our good fortune—when the plane lurched and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling and a passenger in the back screamed.
— Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

If I had not heard the singing voice that night, none of the rest might have happened. Mama might yet be carving her bones; Mordecai lingering in his attic, leading me through the same old lessons on the Sperm; both of my crows would still accompany me everywhere.
— Janice Clark, The Rathbones: A Novel